six days.

Lily has had a return-to-Haiti countdown going for a while now, but this morning when she ripped off a new number and yelled, "SIX! Six more days 'till we go home!"--it punched me in the stomach.  

Every year it is like this...I am so anxious to go home, anxious to be back to not just talking about and raising support for our calling, but DOING our calling, missing Haitian friends and family, and then BAM.  

We leave in less than a week, and I feel clammy.

All summer we've been sharing about how while YES, it is not easy, there is no place we'd rather be than in the center of His will for our lives.  And while that's still true, six days out, you can't help but back-up to the "it is not easy" part and ponder, "Why do we live in Haiti again?"

Why is Dad's living room filled with wheat flour and drink mix packets, sunscreen and new underwear, all surrounding the bathroom scale and ziploc bags to add and subtract and re-arrange 100 times before meeting the magic number of 50-point-zero pounds?  Again?  

Why did the girls have to go through (count 'em) 8 vaccinations and additional blood draws yesterday to get them physically as ready as we can to live in a place with so many illnesses so long ago extincted in America?

Why are we trying to shovel blueberries and ice-cream and memories and "one more family Scrabble night" into our bellies and hearts as we sadly approach another year without them?

And where in the WORLD is Matt?  After four great days with our Niceville, Florida family I KNOW we got him at the airport, but only to load up his car and watch him pull out the driveway an hour later heading for Indiana for Emmaus Board Meetings.  

Sigh.

It is not easy.  

To add to the craziness yesterday, the most sane woman I know drove 6 hours to join us.  We laid awake at night most nights those four years at Asbury College 2001-2005, talking about classes and family and boys, yes, but most often, talking about His World.  

She was heading for the 10/40 window, I was heading for Haiti, we were taking anthropology and missions classes and staring at our walls of world maps and dreaming of what God could do with a few girls ready to GO and crazy-love His territory, His people.  

Bex, Lily and I, 2009, Haiti

And as soon as we could get our suitcases packed and paid for after graduation, we went, and have been going ever since, and every moment I get to lay awake with her again talking 'till dark-thirty is sweet and priceless and un-counted-on.    

She gets that "punched in the gut" feeling 6 days out.  She gets the what in the world am I doing? soliloquy.  

Best, Bex gets that even her heart is not her own.  When she gave it to God, He gave it back to her ALL messed up and re-arranged, and 10/40 will always be there.  When I hear her talk, she says aloud what my heart knows to be true.  There is nothing else in life but to be faithful.

My dad's living room is full of tennis shoes for the students because even my heart is not my own.  It's all His, and for today, His heart for mine is clearly in Haiti.  And that's that.

I seek Him.  I trust Him.  With my needs, with my girls, with my husband (Matt, you MUST come back by the 5th!!), with my future, and with my heart.  

Somedays, that is an easy thing.  And other days, putting one faithful foot in front of the other feels like your heart is being conflicted to pieces.

And on those days, we're standing on that child-like faith He so desires: What He desires for me is that I see Him, walking on the sea, with no shore, no success, no goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see HIM.  

So there you have it.  We're praising the Lord and packing the suitcases, getting our shots and putting on a few extra ice-cream pounds.  We see Him.  

For Matt and Stacey Ayars, today, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men" means we're getting on a plane and flying back to Home Sweet Haiti.  

Six days.